diamonds in the sky?

Standing on the edge of tomorrow, we wait to face what comes. Tonight, tomorrow’s edge looks remarkably like the edge of a rooftop, not quite safe, but worth the risk – we are young, unstoppable and fancy-free, aren’t we? The corrugated iron is still warm from hours basking in the sun, and the blanket that we pulled along with us seems unnecessary for insulation, but bundled up it makes a decent make-shift cushion. Everything creaks once we are all in position, but it holds, and in the darkness, everyone’s slight sigh of relief is audible. We wait, lie back on the roof, count the stars, contemplate existence, the usual things that you do when it’s night time and you’ve had a little too much Jose Cuervo and your friends are all moderately academic or like to claim that they know something about philosophy, anyway.

Because our eyes are focused on what’s above, rather than looking across the city, it starts without our realising it. Sound travels more slowly than light, after all, so when we are startled by the first resounding boom across the valley, the sky is already full of dancing fire, masquerading as stardust and as lava. We watch, hypnotized, as the spectacle continues, sound and vision perpetually out of sync, but no less beautiful, even as those last trailing bangs echo over the city as after the last of the lights have gone out.

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the low-down

I'm Briar – Briar Lawry, if you were wondering which particular one. Raw Library is an anagram of my name and a place for my writing – about anything, in theory, but mostly about books, the music industry and chronic illness. And sometimes coffee.